How does the DJ Diamond record compare with the DJ Roc album, DJ Spinn and the Bangs & Works comp (these are the only proper footwork releases I have along with Man I Do It by DJ Spinn FTR), is it markedly different or a departure from that kind of thing??

diamond, roc, then nate (who i like some of, but who also sometimes sounds like he has little idea of what hes doing exactly). not included the two rashad albums just cos while theyre good they dont really feel substantial enough and i think rashad has better tracks not included on those two.

if you like any/all of those I can't see you not liking it - he has most of the same tricks and weird production signifiers as Roc and Nate

I also have a CD of his from I think 2009 that DJ Slugo put out - afaict it's the only other DJ Diamond thing available to buy right now - it's like a 40-track mix, not as batshit rhythm-wise as the stuff on the artist album but still v densely edited/looped/whatever

I guess I find most proper footwork stuff "interesting" rather than something I could sit and enjoy outside of a dancing context. A lot of it's done in Fruityloops I understand, and you can tell. What it reminds me of mostly were the earliest tracks my friend and I used to make in the mid 90s using tracker modules - uncanny really, down to the pitched and sampled vocals and frantic beats. It's kind of a tacky, underproduced sound, but I'm waiting for someone to come along and polish it up - no doubt to major complaints from OG fans - which I guess is what Machinedrum's done recently.

i wouldnt mind the polishing up, that would be good, but machine drum seems to do that within a totally diff context, one that seems to take out all the ruffness of juke and the hip hop attitude and energy etc. footwork right now seems to be in a kind of mid/late 80s rap phase. im waiting for its version of 90s hip hop come in, when it progresses a bit more and the producers get better. not sure if that will happen though as it doesnt seem like a genre thats really moving forward as such, it just is.

I get the rap comparison, but I also hear a lot of parallels with gabba and nosebleed - a lot of ideas that have been abandoned since those days. Agreed - polish shouldn't be about smoothing things down - if someone were to progress the sound it'd need to retain, perhaps amp up, the adrenaline of the circle.

not sure if that will happen though as it doesnt seem like a genre thats really moving forward as such, it just is.

Give it a break - Bangs and Works only came out less than a year ago, and already we're seeing external producers (Africa Hitech, Chrissy, Machinedrum, Sully) taking it on as key influence. Definitely see this going forwards - people adding vocals, bigger production. Only a matter of time till a footwork-inspired track gets in the charts I reckon.

It's really hard for me to even think of the Machinedrum record as a footwork record. Obviously, I see the elements in it that prompt the comparisons (not to mention its context, record label, etc), but it feels totally different. I like it because it doesn't feel like he's being overly reverential/cautious and trying to make "real" footwork, but nor is it so "IDM-fied" that it feels completely abstracted. I don't get people calling it sterile; there's some real rush-y fiery stuff on it, and some moments of real emotional beauty ("Come1" in particular). I started a thread on it a little while ago, actually:

I wouldn't compare Machinedrum's stuff to the actual footwork music. Not worth getting bogged down in that argument. That's like comparing Squarepusher and Aphex to Goldie etc. It's footwork-inspired electronica and leave it at that.

i love this stuff, but isnt it older than we think it is? cos yeah mu picking it up has alerted other producers to footwork, but as far as within the scene/city, i dont think its news anymore, its been going as is for a while now. dont think its on the wane or anything (im not close enough to know though), but i think maybe cos its so small, its hard to tell if there are new guys coming in who could progress it. then again the bangs and works comp seemed to have plenty of names on there so maybe theres more fresh blood than im thinking.

can we stop talking about that bloody machine drum record w/r/t footwork cos thats like including aphex or BOC in a convo about hip hop beats/production in the late 90s.

Haha, sorry "Give it a break" wasn't meant in any aggressive way. But it's only just starting to break out of its own scene-based and largely functional form. The question is, will it do a dubstep - itself at first a very insular scene which went off-the-scale in commerciality over several years?

no way, it will never do a dubstep. this stuff, and i hate using this phrase cos its loaded, but i think footwork is prob too 'black' to really do a dubstep. dubstep went worldwide and mainstream cos its racially much more neutral. footwork is like grime, in this current climate, its just too hard and street to really crossover. and if i can be selfish, i dont think i want it to do a dubstep actually. if this was the mid 90s, it would have more chance to do a dubstep. or a jungle/drum n bass, rather (which is what its closer to sonically in some ways, though i know you werent talking about how it actually sounds, but jungle somehow managed to get mainstream plaudits/chart action despite being as hard as it was).

then again, if someone from UK BASS (ugh) could work some footwork into a poppy song, i dont see why it wouldnt enter the charts. but the chicago guys arent really finessed enough from what ive heard so far to do that on their own. but if benga or skream or someone did a footwork type banger it could prob do alright. im okay with that not happening for a while yet though.

then again, if someone from UK BASS (ugh) could work some footwork into a poppy song,

This is what I mean - I don't think it's inconceivable at all. Chrissy's sound is already designed for full on party-styles. I mean, the OG dubstep was about 12 guys nodding under hoods in a pitch-black room, and look where that went.

chrissys stuff is a bit silly though (as already noted upthread), its almost like meta party music, more about how its in love with party music than actually just BEING party music, if that makes sense. or maybe im creating false binaries. and iirc, the main party-hearty songs on chrissys album werent the footwork-y ones, they were the ones that were more like 90s mashups.

og dubstep like idk, horsepower is soft to me lol. i do love golden nugget, but all that dubby garage stuff was pretty boring. footwork is like grime, prob just too weird and hard and lo-fi for people to place right now. and rhythmically people are going to be confused by it. speaking of lo fi, the 1st song on flight muzik sounds like a really poor bit rate mp3!

og dubstep like idk, horsepower is soft to me lol. i do love golden nugget, but all that dubby garage stuff was pretty boring.

We've agreed on this in the past IIRC. I remember being convinced there was no commercial worth in dubstep. There was no conceivable way that this slow, unfocused sound could ever reach the charts. But after several major transmutations, it did, and to cut a long story short I had to eat a hat.

i don't think "too black" is any sort of stop-er-er to something crossing over or going super commercial - even grime cited as a reference technically crossed over i mean i first heard about it from mtv, it just didn't stay. like i want to say "UH RAP + HIP-HOP HI?" but it seems too obvious and maybe i'm not getting the suggestion.

Also, I hate to be Mr. Hi-Fi Bore yet again, but how many ITT who aren't much impressed with, say, the Machinedrum record or the DJ Diamond record have only heard soundclips from the Planet Mu website, or YouTube videos, or other similarly fidelity-compromised outlets? I mean shit, this music gets so much of its energy and propulsion and vitality from BASS (I feel like Captain Obvious pointing that out)! It just sounds like skittery pitter-patter without that, and definitely not exciting... There are certain styles of music that I feel just cannot be properly evaluated on small systems.

― Clarke B., Thursday, September 1, 2011 7:42 AM Bookmark

I've been listening to the Machinedrum record on a good system and still think it's boring. I like the DJ Diamond tho.

I can def see footwork nights getting popular in the UK - possibly with its own homegrown scene - developing out of disenchanted dubsteppers wanting to hear the next thing. Already so many producers are doing this melting pot thing where they'll try their hand at future garage, funky, dubstep, grime etc - what's stopping footwork creeping in?

anyway the more i think about it the more the comparison seems apt, a small group of regional producers reformatting a popular music to suit the needs of a particular social use for the music

now that is really just the script for the birth of any new genre, but i think it's relevant because the popular musics are related (soul & funk vs hip hop & r+b) and the reformatting method is based on "tape" edits in both cases, though the resulting sound is almost diametrically opposed (super long build and sustain in disco vs super choppy and abrupt in footwork)

(3 tunes on Bangs & Works Vol. 2, but a ton of just-as-good and even better stuff on his Soundcloud page, each clocking in at 1:34 long (ie. same grid, same tempo, same # of bars--they flow well from one-->next)

'Bangs & Works 2' = great, totally overlooked it until very recently, have fallen totally for DJ MC - 'Y Fall', something about the incongruity of the downtempo repeated natural/vocal thing, off against the kung-fu computer game sample swooshing broken rhythm reminds me of great 80s Chicago house moods = double thumbs up.